- - I'm Kit Kemp, design director for Firmdale Hotels. Every room is like a painted canvas. It has to tell a story. We're always known for our colour, and Ham Yard Hotel is no exception. But I wanted, when you arrived at the hotel, not to be accosted by it. So the actual lobby itself has actually just white walls. If you look above the reception desk, there's an art installation of a loom, which is by someone called Hermione Skye O'Hea. And I found her at her graduate show at the Chelsea College of Art. I thought, this actually represents what I love in my design, and what I'm always trying to achieve, and that is that love of textiles, texture and colour. Coming from the lobby, the first room that you enter is the library. One of the reasons why people like to stay in our hotels are because they're so English. I never want to lose that feeling of comfort that you get when you arrive in a very English hotel. This room has a very soft and luxurious feel. It has wonderful high ceilings, and a lovely scale to be working from. There always has to be a comfortable chair, and the two chairs that everyone loves to come to are covered in a beautiful grey and white herringbone, which feels like cashmere. I never want to use a fabric that feels prickly, or one that I couldn't sit on in the nude, really, because there always has to have that feeling of softness about the place. The paintings in the room are very important, and the most important painting we have is the Lucy Kemp-Welch. It's a very large painting, it must be sort of eight feet by four. It's cart horses and beautiful blue sea, and seagulls above the plough. I think she's as good a painter of horses as Munnings was, but because she's a woman, she was never taken as seriously. She worked right up until after the First World War, and she did many paintings of women that were working in the fields and looking after the horses while the men were away, actually at war. We've got, I mean, a gorgeous painting over the fireplace by Joanna Carrington. There's a link there with the Bloomsbury Group, which then links with our Charlotte Street hotel. This is a painting in France, and it's a lovely reflection of a fisherman painting over a bridge, but also looks quite abstract, and then brings us into another time frame within the room. There's always a balance in the room, and it's lovely to have work by established artists sitting beside young artists. And I think it also makes the room feel less serious and a little bit more witty. The books in the library are curated, and there's a frontispiece, this book is for your reading pleasure, please return. Looking out of the doors of the library, you're aware of the length of view. Every building should be like an adventure to walk through. To get from one area to the other should pique your curiosity, and if I can do that with the most jaded businessmen, or somebody who's just got off a very long flight, then I feel that I've achieved something.